


In Which Sophie Again Explains Things to Howl

by Untherius



Category: Howl Series - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 00:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Untherius/pseuds/Untherius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As it turns out, life...and having a child...are far more complicated than Howl ever would have imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which Sophie Again Explains Things to Howl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [antediluvian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/antediluvian/gifts).



Howl stepped through his castle's front door from Kingsbury. It had been a long day, mostly filled with meetings. Some of those had to do with his typical work. Those had gone well enough, as usual, even if they weren't entirely eventful. Others dealt with the looming destruction of the world of Ingary—the world he now called home.

That endeavor was one he found endlessly fascinating, if monumentally difficult. It involved astronomy, astrophysics, geophysics, climatology and global ecosystems, just to name a few. Any one of these fields could take an entire lifetime to study and he had to cram it all into one! Never mind that his lifespan was at least four times longer than it would have been otherwise, thanks to his wife.  
He was making progress, but it was annoyingly slow. Ingarians were at least as prone to bureaucratic and political quagmire as humans were.

“Grand Coulee Dam!” exclaimed Howl. “Who knew creating a global emergency plan would be so...” He broke off when he noticed Sophie on the floor in the middle of the room. She was sitting in what he called the Lotus position, her eyes closed. “What are you doing, honey?” No sooner had he spoken those words than it occurred to him that he probably already knew the answer.

She looked up at him with one eye. “I'm working on our little project,” she said calmly.

“Our child is a project?” said Howl.

“Yes, alskling, he's a project,” said Sophie with a sigh. Her husband could be quite dense sometimes.

Howl blinked. “He?”

“Yes, he.”

“How do you know?”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “You really haven't been paying attention, have you?” It was more of a statement.

Howl sighed. A year ago, this sort of thing would have instantly raised his hackles. Somehow, having a wife, an incipient child and a personal responsibility to save an entire world was having a leveling effect on him. “I'm sorry. Remind me again?”

Sophie visibly relaxed. “Come here,” she said, patting her hand on the floor. Howl sat down next to her. “Take off your shoe and sock...just one will do.” He complied.

She stuck her own bare foot out in front of her. When Howl had divested his foot, he stretched his leg out next to his wife's. He began to gently stroke her foot with his own. She giggled.

“That tickles. Now pay attention. See how my toes are the same size and how they're nice and straight?” She pointed at them, indicating the gentle, even arc they made, giving her foot an overall bi-symmetrical appearance. “See how your toes are all different sizes and how they're arranged in a wedge shape?” Howl nodded. “And I _still_ don't know how you manage to walk on those things without falling over.”

Howl started to speak, but Sophie interrupted. “And see here?” She rolled her leg to show her calf. She pointed at her twin Achilles tendons and the dewclaw that protruded from the point where her calf muscle split. She pointed at Howl's single tendon and unbroken lower leg line, bearing still-healing wounds from his wife's extra appendages.

Howl reached over and cupped his wife's calf with his hand, gently stroking it. Sophie elbowed him gently in the ribs.

“Ow!” Howl rubbed his side. “You could puncture a lung with that.”

Sophie ignored him and began unbuttoning her blouse.

“Now we're getting somewhere,” said Howl.

Sophie rolled her eyes again. “Is that _always_ on your mind? No wonder there are six billion of you!” She pulled one arm out of a sleeve and pointed at the bony protuberance on her elbow. “And this? And no, it's _not_ capable of puncturing a lung...bruising, yes, puncturing, no.” She reinserted the arm and buttoned her blouse once more. “That's just on the _outside_.”

She stood up and walked over to their bookshelf. Howl followed her. She took two books off the shelf; one on human and one on Ingarian anatomy. She opened each to a drawing of a skeleton. They were similar, but the differences between them...skull shape, sternum length, rib arrangement, spinal curvature, bone length ratios, just to name a few...would have given a human anthropologist fits.

Then she turned to pages that showed the internal organs, which were even more different. Both shared most of the major organs...heart, lungs, stomach, intestine...but they were shaped and arranged quite differently. Most Ingarian organs were bi-symmetrical; their livers had four lobes; their eight heart chambers were all more or less the same size; twin vane-cavas entered and twin aortas exited. They lacked a spleen, its job being done by other organs; a couple of those were absent in humans.

“That's just the beginning! There are more differences in things like neural architecture, biochemistry...of which we're both acutely aware...musculature and so forth. Don't even get me started on the dietary issues! Howl, this isn't at _all_ like, say, hybridizing roses or breeding livestock. This is _complicated_! You know how when you change just one part of a spell just a little, it radically changes the whole thing?”

Howl nodded.

“It's like that, only a hundred times more so! The Ingarian and human genomes are _barely_ compatible. Having a half-human child is not just a matter or what color his eyes will be, or whether or not he'll have streaky hair, or how tall he'll be. He could have organs that don't work, or try to grow in the same space. Or his immune system might attack itself. As I've said Unelanuhi knows how many times, we might _look_ a lot like you, but we are most definitely _not_ you. This is very tricky and very dangerous for him. Even being born will be dangerous. It's a miracle he was even conceived in the first place, and that was only possible because I eliminated all our respective genetic errors.” She sighed. “Alskling, this is, without a doubt, the single most difficult thing any Ingarian has ever done.”

Howl blinked. “You're...genetically engineering our son?”

“Yes! And it's exhausting!”

Howl moved to kneel behind his wife and began to massage her shoulders. “Wow...and that's coming from the most powerful empath Ingary has seen in ten generations.”

“You're exaggerating.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“Will he be able to use magic? Or do you plan let that detail be a surprise, too?”

“Oh, he'll be a mage...you can be sure of that. I can feel it.”

“You didn't...engineer that?”

“It's not genetic. Oh, it's hereditary all right, but it's not genetic...don't ask me how. I think he'll be stronger than the two of us put together.”

“I should hope so,” said Howl with a hint of his typical arrogance showing. “He is, after all, the son of the most powerful wizard.”

“You're incorrigible,” said Sophie, but without the usual feistiness she usually injected into such remarks.

Howl put an arm around his wife. “So what are we going to name him?”

She gazed up at him. “You choose. I'm making all the other decisions about him, so it's only fair.”

Howl thought for a few moments. “Let's name him Aedan.”

“That's perfect.” She turned around and looked into his eyes. “ _You_ , mister, need to unwind.”

Howl thought for a moment, then smiled wickedly. “I know just how to do that.”

Sophie's eyebrows went up. “Oh, no you don't.”

“Oh, yes I do.”

Sophie leaped to her feet, but Howl caught her around the waist, then picked her up and started for the stairs.

“Howl Jenkins, put me down this instant!”

“No,” said Howl as he climbed toward their bedroom.

“You're impossible!”

“That's why you love me.”

Markl stepped into the room just in time to hear their door slam, then decided whatever it was would have to wait.


End file.
